by Pradip Biswas
Noted Film Critic Pradip Biswas in this invaluable account rediscovers the ideology of Iranian Film Maestro Mohsen Makhmalbaf. His critique on Makhmalbaf films gives a complete domain of understanding of Iranian Cinema.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the maestro of Iranian cinema, is now a household name, an artist with a robust conscience. He bleeds for the oppressed and the marginalized people of the globe through his cinema, very soul-stirring and riveting. His appearance on the horizon of humanist cinema is not a sudden event. Much struggle lies behind his raging rise. His first three films such as Boycott (1985) The Street Vendor (1986) and The Bicyclist (1983), were praised at every corner of International film festivals of the globe. The Bicyclist, it may be emphasized, because of its stark realism and epistemic exposure, has made Mohsen Makhmalbaf an icon of liberating cinema in Iran, affected by class bias, religious bigotry, social orthodoxy and domestic taboos. But despite all kind of threats issued by the establishment and hidebound laws in Iran, Mohsen Makhmalbaf wriggles through these iron bars to snatch global attention for his films. In one word, his films, if counted till this day, are a reminder to the fact that we are not living in the best of all possible worlds. Thus he becomes a citizen of the world; his courage and grit make him a much sought-after director growing out of passion and respect for his total works.
Said Mohsen Makhmalbaf: “I made a film named Bicycle Run/Bicyclist, having Afghanistan as subject. To make that movie, I travelled to Pakistan, crossed southern parts of Afghanistan and shot parts of the film in Pakistan.” The Bicycle Run is the story of an Afghan émigré who’s wife is in hospital and to meet the expenses, he has to work seven days a week, riding on his old bicycle, running from one side of the city to another and, as he gets weaker and emaciated, a Bazaar that is in the making is getting larger, stronger and fatter every day. The job is sternly demanded by the stark necessity to save a human life, in this case his wife. Its structure is strongly straightforward but also elliptical at the same stroke. One seems easy to get the drift of the film and enumerate the ribbon of hard hours, days, weeks and slogged-times, a force the petty commoners must have.
In this context, I like to reveal to the cinephiles how Mohsen, given rough-hewn reality and red claws, did summon courage to make and present the film to the world audience. Said he: “I used that metaphor to highlight the realities of Afghanistan of those years, when the Russians were still in Afghanistan, caught in an internal-nationalistic and epic war that was ruining the country while some were getting fat, a war the West, confronted with the Eastern bloc, would approve of.” There is a tale about the film. It is like this: In fact, the idea of making another film about that country that was always under foreign yoke that brought nothing but poverty and destruction was in his mind. After Mollah Mohammad (Omar, the Taleban’s supreme leader) whom no one had heard his name came with a white flag, the poor Afghan people, tired and sick of years of internal wars, welcomed him without knowing that the government he represented was a joint product of the Saudis and the Pakistanis. Mollah Omar had never written a letter to see if he makes mistakes or not. The anecdote is nothing but a wave of vibes the film evoked during its life-time run at theatres. In Iran, however, the Bicyclist did raise eye-brows and hiccups among the Islamic groups, controlling the Government stridently. The pity is that the same film is banned in Iran even today, even now. This in a way truncates the freedom of an artist, director who sensibly cares to open the wounds of a society, antagonistic to the ordinary living of the masses.
A critic normally travels by analogy while engaged in critical study of any work of art. One has to remember one De Sica rose to limelight with his film Bicycle Thieves in the forties when the movement of neo realism just started with a splash. The film in course of time became an epic work and a primer to all beginners in filmmaking. In the process, the neo-realist movement bred a band of very strong filmmakers all over the world, sparking off a history of sorts. The record remains still unbroken. Mohsen, however, has not definitely drawn any elements but inspiration from De Scia for his cinema. Like other directors, Mohsen seems surely enthused and inspired to pick a name “bicycle”, maybe, from the past experience. His film discoursed above modestly mirrors it.
Given the agitation Mohsen has suffered due to various shortcomings in Iranian society, he chose the subject of a blind boy Khorshid in his film The Silence (1998). In many a way, the The Silence is a sympathetic tribute to the cursed blindness that grips millions of children all over the world. In the film, the focus is much on ambience in Iran where the blind boy, out of dark tunnel, gradually sees and perceives nuances of music of life and living. Here again, there is no similarity between Bergman’s renowned film The Silenceand Mohsen’s The Silence. While Bergman captures the elements of alienation and lack of communication between two souls, Mohsen’s The Silence pins on the elegy of the blind boy and his transcendence to pulsation of realization leading to the meaning of life on a barren, loveless society. The noted critic Jeffrey Anderson hails the films thus: “Makhmalbaf is mostly concerned with the specific world that Khorshid has created for himself. He hears music everywhere he goes and becomes obsessed with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which he equates to his landlord's knock on their door.”
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